Oil wells flow naturally for a short period of time before reservoir engineers need to employ artificial lift techniques to boost production. Their challenge is to determine the rate and content of fluid production from each zone so that production can be optimized. Such information has been relatively straightforward to acquire due to a large Joule-Thompson cooling effect as gas expands, and Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) systems have been deployed in many gas wells. Thermal differences during production in oil wells are smaller given the lower flow rates and smaller Joule-Thompson effect.
There is a growing need for the ability to monitor low oil flow rates at multiple points in oil production wells.